Alnwick Castle has belonged to one English family for over 700 years. Traditionally the seat of the region’s highest ranking aristocrat, the castle and the adjacent garden’s 42 acres have been passed down through various earls and dukes to the current owner, Ralph Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland, who moved in in the mid-1990s with his wife, Jane. The duchess set about improving the dilapidated property, adding fountains, mazes, and sweeping lawns—and creating a charitable entity called the Alnwick Garden, which includes the poison garden.
While some of the most destructive plants here are also sources of medicinal cures and antidotes—like Madagascar periwinkle, which can cause liver toxicity when ingested but is also used in leukemia treatment—the benefits neither inspire nor impress the duchess, who once said, “The story of how plants can cure I find pretty boring, really—much better to know how a plant kills.”
The ubiquity of poison in our own backyards motivated a group of forensic chemists to conduct a year-long experiment in the garden quantifying toxins in 25 different plants that have been accidentally ingested by children. Atropa belladonna, used by the Teacup Poisoner, was one of the most hazardous to kids, the scientists determined, and better public awareness was needed to prevent further fatal consequences.
Back in the gardeners’ break room, a whiteboard listed that day’s jobs: Cut the grass along an access road; tend to 20 lethal mandrakes. “Mandragora, so entwined in human history,” said Leach, who went on to explain that pharaohs used Mandragora as an intoxicant, and Romans as a battlefield anesthetic. More recently, the Harry Potter books made squealing, sentient mandrakes a source of color, with magical roots resembling crying human babies.
Leach only started reading up on Mandragora this spring, he confessed, after receiving an email from a mandrake enthusiast who wanted to give Alnwick her collection, which included a rare varietal native to the mountains of Central Asia. The 20 inherited mandrakes now live in a covered facility by the break room. “It’s the roots that are super poisonous,” Leach said. “We’re going to have to cage them.”
Caged plants, being the most vicious, draw the greatest interest. Some Ricinus communis, producer of the poison ricin, are kept caged. But an innocuous-looking green and purple plant must be, by law. “Salvia divinorum,” Leach said. “You smoke it, and you go on an acid-like high for 30 seconds.”
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